HOUSTON — The same Texas senator who put an end to the final meal requests for death row inmates now wants to stop publicizing their final words.
Houston Senator John Whitmire is demanding the Texas Department of Criminal Justice stop releasing those statements to the media.
He was motivated by the final statement of Bill King, who was executed last week for the dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper.
King had nothing to say before he was executed, but he asked that a brief statement be read after his death.
“For TDCJ to accommodate a heinous murderer’s request is disrespectful to the victim’s family and the State of Texas,” Whitmire wrote in a letter to TDCJ. “If a death row inmate has something to say to the public or victims, let him or her say it while they are strapped to the gurney.”
It was another killer executed in the Byrd case that caught Whitmire’s attention in 2011.
Lawrence Brewer’s outrageous request for his last meal included a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas, one pound of barbecue and a half loaf of white bread, pizza meat lover's special, a bowl of fried okra with ketchup, two chicken fried steaks smothered in gravy and onions, a cheese and ground beef omelet, one pint of homemade vanilla Blue Bell ice cream, one slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts and three root beers, NPR reported.
After prison staff members fulfilled his wish, Brewer refused to eat any of it.
The tradition of the final meal ended after Brewer’s execution. Now inmates can only choose items that are already on the prison menu.
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